Proton Competition hopes to bring a pair of brand new Ford Mustang GT3s to the European Le Mans Series grid in 2024, alongside its expanded LMP2 effort.
Speaking with DSC, team boss Christian Ried explained that the German team’s plan is to run a pair of Mustangs in both the FIA WEC and ELMS next season, for the first year of the LMGT3 class in both championships.
However, whether or not the team will be able to run additional Mustangs in Europe depends on Ford’s ability to build extra cars for Proton in time.
“We have two cars confirmed for WEC and we are still in discussions to add more cars for ELMS,” Ried said. “The big question is whether or not they can deliver additional cars to us in time for the first race. There’s a lot of interest in the car and in general, GT3 is growing and growing.
“The idea is to run two LMP2s in ELMS, then we will see if we run Porsche or Fords. We ordered four Porsches (911 GT3 R 992s) last year, a long time ago. We told them we didn’t need to get them for the beginning of 2023. The plan was to get one in the middle of 2023 for testing and the other three at the end of this year for a WEC programme in 2024, which obviously we don’t need anymore.
“As of right now we don’t have them, and the issue is we are unsure if Porsche will do a second production run of GT3 Rs, so we are waiting.”
Currently, Proton is already in possession of a single Mustang GT3, which it has already begun testing ahead of its WEC effort.
“The car (as a platform) is 95 per cent there, at tests it’s just small things with reliability now. The car has a good base,” he said. “We will do at least six to eight more days of testing with the car before the end of the year.
“We started our test programme with a big bit of support from Multimatic and Ford, and the plan for us is to do the last two to four days of testing with just our engineers in the garage.”
In addition to its planned LMGT3 effort in the FIA WEC and ELMS, Proton is also set to double up in LMP2. To do this, it has purchased three ORECAs from current WEC team Prema, which is dropping out of LMP2 to focus on the Lamborghini LMDh programme.
“Right now we have one (ORECA), but by Saturday evening in Bahrain (in November), we will have four,” Ried explained. “The idea is to do the Rookie test with those cars on Sunday, ship them to Asian Le Mans, two of them, and ship one back home to prepare it and our existing car for ELMS.”
With four ORECAs, Proton will also compete in the Asian Le Mans Series over the winter with two cars for the first time. Ried admits the allure of winning a Le Mans entry in the ACO’s winter championship has attracted it to commit.
“It’s the first time for us as a team in Asian Le Mans,” he said. “I was there last year with Jonas (Ried, Christian’s son) when he was racing with Rinaldi. It’s a really nice championship with a nice atmosphere. It’s very relaxed so we are looking for it. We want two cars to fight for a win and a championship so we can get a Le Mans entry.
“We had six cars at Le Mans this year, I don’t think we will have six cars next year. But if we can have four or five that would be great.”
Proton’s LMP2 commitment is set to run parallel with its 2024 top class effort in both the FIA WEC and IMSA, where it will run at least one 963 in each of the two championships, for the full season.
Mustang images courtesy of Ford Performance
